


six for the price of none

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [11]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pets, Priests, Street Rats, Supernatural Elements, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, accidental pet aquisition, peter is a flower child, wade is fighting a war against nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:22:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Wade needed to lull this rat into a false sense of security. The rat-enthusiasts/heathens online believed that rats liked music, so he put Beethoven’s Für Elise on repeat and waited. When that elicited no response, he remembered that he was dealing with a New York rat, not a fucking Paris rat, so he blasted the Hamilton Mixtape, figuring that he’d hit the Broadway and rap vibes in one go.(Wade accidentally acquires a pet and hates every second of it.)





	six for the price of none

**Author's Note:**

> i am avoiding writing the last chapter of inimitable; i am also avoiding being a responsible adult. So, congrats, y'all get dumpster fire verse.  
> There are references of threats of violence to animals, but they are all curbed pretty quick by Peter

After the third glass fell off his counter around the ass crack of dawn, Wade decided he had a pest problem.

Again.

He was pissed but not surprised. After Vanessa had died, it was as if all the vermin in New York had made a collective pact to make Wade’s already shitty life even more shitty. First, it had been the roaches, then the bedbugs, then the fucking termites and lately the horny-ass pigeons on his balcony--Jesus Christ, you flying fucking rats, get a room—and now he had to add whatever the fuck this was to the list. He wasn’t happy about it. The guy at the hardware store had told him that it wasn’t worth it to stay in the place if it had that many problems, but Wade was an ex-special forces, fulltime, professional assassin and he would be damned before he let some punk ass rat chase him out of his own home.

He seethed as he bought the traps and the biggest, shittiest jar of peanut butter he could find. When he got home, he printed out several tiny eviction notices to give the horrible little monster due process. He taped the notices at the end of the traps, then smeared a dollop of peanut butter next to them. He took a moment to embody the mind of a rat, then scattered the traps everywhere Wade-rat would have been excited about (which was every-fucking-where).

Then he called that a job well done and went out to blow a guy’s head off.

 

 

He came home to another glass shattered all over his kitchen floor.

Not a single trap had been so much as licked.

It was 3 in the morning, but he was on a fucking mission. He went to three separate grocery stores to find the nicest, fanciest peanut butter he could. He re-laid the traps with this addition and went to bed furious.

 

 

No dice. No mice. No more playing nice.

This meant war.

 

 

Spidey heard him scheming because the voices were too invested in the Situation to be contained in his head at the present time and he wasn’t about to stop them because he needed as many heads on the problem as possible.

“Wade, you only have one head,” Spidey pointed out gently, “Three voices is still one head.”

Wade was busy. He didn’t have time for semantics.

“You know, if you tell me what’s going on, you could have _two_ heads,” Spidey said.

He already had two heads, what he needed was a new strategy. And teeny, teeny, tiny thumbscrews.

“Dude, you’re getting manic. What’s going on?” Spidey insisted.

He tried to scare Spidey away with a grimace, but the kid was no longer afraid of him. That was a problem. He needed to add that to the list of problems to be remedied after the immediate threat was dealt with. He slunk away to the other side of the roof to escape the kid’s scrutiny.

“ _Wade_ ,” the kid whined. He followed him. Goddamnit. He’d forgotten to factor in mobility. See? This is why he was being defeated by a fucking rodent.

“Oh, you have a rat?” Spidey asked, “I kinda like rats. The indoor ones, not the outdoor ones. The indoor ones are kind of cute and friendly. Dr. Banner let me hold a few of his mice, too. He’s named them all after colors. Mr. Stark said that he should have named them after numbers, so he’d be less sad when they kicked it.”

Wade was floored. What kind of monster would _name_ their mortal enemy? That’s how things get power, you fool. Once you dignify them with identity, they start to build egos, and egos are really the crux of all the world’s problems. Spidey paused in his mice story.

“I mean, that’s a really good point, but I’m not seeing how that relates to your rat. Like at all. Should we name it?”

“SILENCE. DEMON,” Wade shouted, grabbing Spidey’s skinny shoulders and attempting to shake some sense into the child before he ruined this for Wade forever. Spidey was surprised and grabbed at his hands.

“Okay, okay! No naming, we’re not naming! I got it, put me down!”

He hadn’t realized he’d picked him up. Fuck. He needed to get ahold of himself, this wasn’t an intelligent enemy, it was just a fucking rat. He could outsmart a fucking rat. He gently put Spidey back on his feet and gave him a little pat on the head as an apology. Spidey accepted the head pat, then ducked under his arm to look at the master plan he’d been typing on his phone. Tricky little bastard, he’d done that whole song and dance just to get close enough to snoop.

Wait.

Now, there was an idea.

“I will lift the meme ban if you help me catch this rat,” Wade told him seriously. Spidey’s head snapped up from his snooping. He turned around and wrapped both fists in Wade’s suit to jerk him down to eye level.

“Let’s do this,” he said.

 

 

Spidey was the wrong man for this job. He hadn’t quite developed enough murderous intent or situational understanding yet. He did not like Wade’s traps and wanted him to get the cagey ones that did not trap little mousy paws in them. Wade tried to explain to him that this demon vermin, if released alive, would no doubt reinvade his apartment, but the kid wasn’t buying it. He got all frowny and upset and said that his aunt had taught him that animals deserved kindness and respect, even the unfriendly ones.

Fucking. Ugh.

He couldn’t exactly say “your aunt is a disgusting idealist,” so they ended up back at the goddamn hardware store.  

“Is this your son?” the guy at the till asked as he rung up the useless-ass traps. Wade glared down at Spidey’s innocent doe eyes.

“No, he’s next on my list.”

“I’m his cousin,” Spidey corrected happily.

“Well, you should convince your big cuz to move out of his shithole of a house,” the interloper continued, waving his scanning gun at the million traps Spidey deemed unnecessary, but which Wade deemed precautionary measures.

“Mmm, I would, but it’s the last place he and his girlfriend lived together before she died,” Spidey told him with a smile. The dickwad choked and dropped his gun.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” he told Wade. Damn right. Wade gave him an eyebrow.

“And before he got cancer,” Spidey added helpfully. The guy froze; he might started dissociating from horror and embarrassment.

“Oh my god,” he whimpered, “I am _so fucking sorry._ Oh my--Uh. Don’t worry about these,” he shoved all the traps into a bag and thrust it at them, “Just—just take ‘em. I got it.”

Spidey thanked him and dragged Wade homeward bound.

 

 

“What _are_ you?” Wade asked suspiciously while Spidey dumped the boxes all over his kitchen table and started opening them. Spidey looked up at him.

“Did you say something?”

“Nope.”

 

 

They relocated all of the eviction notices and stupidly organic peanut butter to the inside of the no-kill traps and Spidey told him to report back on their effectiveness the next day. Wade knew it wasn’t going to work and so gently nudged Spidey towards using that brain of his to figure out a better, more permanent solution. He asked Spidey not to ask his aunt for one, on the off chance she would say something like “humans should share their space with all animals, even the unfriendly ones.” He justified this by saying it would be embarrassing for him to admit his house was filthy enough to appeal to a rat colony. Spidey bobbed his head in understanding and empathy and scurried off home.

When he was gone, Wade went online to learn about rat psychology.

 

 

No rat entered the traps, as predicted, but Spidey had a new plan, one which Wade could totally get behind. They set up video surveillance to start plotting out the rat’s habits. They were gonna profile the shit out of this rat. And once they’d done that, they’d lay a personalized trap for his mousy little ass.

Spidey went off to school while Wade watched the footage from his bedroom. He refused to go in the kitchen. He needed to lull this rat into a false sense of security. The rat-enthusiasts/heathens online believed that rats liked music, so he put Beethoven’s _F_ _ür Elise_ on repeat and waited. When that elicited no response, he remembered that he was dealing with a New York rat, not a fucking Paris rat, so he blasted the Hamilton Mixtape, figuring that he’d hit the Broadway and rap vibes in one go.

Despite this, hours-long, awe-inspiring display of empathy, at the end of the day, he still had no fucking rat. Not even an inkling. Not even a pawprint (and he had checked, motherfucker).

While he was dusting for rat prints, one of Vanessa’s stupid stacking mugs crashed into the sink.

The fury compelled him out the door and to St. Margaret’s.

 

 

“Dude, you just gotta poison it,” Weasel insisted.

“I can’t poison something that won’t eat,” Wade countered.

“Alright, well, what _has_ it been eating? Just poison that. Or put some of that shit into your traps.”

That gave him pause. What _had_ the rat been eating? Really, it has only been smashing his crockery and glassware, he hadn’t found rat shit or chewed boxes or anything in his cupboards. Or hell, anywhere in the apartment.

“Dude, and I’m saying this completely seriously,” Weasel said, both hands on the bar, “If it ain’t eatin’ and it ain’t shittin’, how do you know it’s a rat?”

“What a terrible fucking thing to say,” Wade told him through the rising panic.

“You got a fucking ghost, man,” Weasel told him solemnly.

 

 

“It’s not a ghost, Wade,” Spidey told him firmly, after checking all the traps.

“Where does your hippie aunt get her sage?” Wade demanded instead.

“From Jackie’s Mind and Body in Queens, but you’re missing the point. It’s not a ghost, ghosts aren’t real, remember?”

“Ness, baby, I haven’t moved on, I promise. I’ve only slept with like other five people,” Wade pleaded towards the kitchen, “And none of them were even half as good as you, baby. Well, Red was a whole other ballpark, but it didn’t mean anything.”

Spidey gave him a disgusted look and ducked back under the counter.

“Did you dust for fingerprints? Rat fingerprints? Where did you even get this stuff?”

A loud crash from the bedroom distracted both of them. Wade frowned and grabbed a knife from the block to go investigate. He could feel Spidey’s unwarranted judgement on his back but ignored it. He cracked open the door. Everything was in place, except that one of Vanessa’s famed, autographed posters had fall down from the wall and onto the side table. The glass was cracked in the bottom corner of the frame. While he was watching, the plastic cup on the bedside table dropped right into the mess of glass.

“Oh, hell no,” he declared, “We are _not_ gonna play this fucking game.”

 

 

Wade pounded on Red’s door until he slammed it open with his pants half undone and a purpling hickey at the bottom of his throat. Spidey was horrified by everything happening. Nelson, who remained mostly clothed and extremely entertained, was a great sport about it, cackling from behind Red.

“I am _trying_ to get laid,” Red snapped without any preamble. Nelson laughed even harder. “Tell me why I am not currently getting laid.”

“I need to borrow your priest,” Wade told him. Red tried to slam the door closed, but Wade sacrificed a hand for it. Red slammed it a second time, undeterred.

“Double D, Wade thinks his girlfriend is haunting him,” Spidey piped up. There was a pause, then Red opened the door enough to glare out at them. He was extremely empathetic about being terrorized by ghosts, even if he still refused to forgive Wade for the whole surprise-ghost thing ever.

“And you need my priest,” he said, “Are you even Catholic?”

“I am anything that pleases the spirits,” Wade told him.

“If you want her out, just burn some fucking sage or something.”

“I don’t want her out,” Wade clarified, “I want her happy.”

“Awwww,” Nelson sighed from inside. He bullied Red away from the door. “That’s so sweet, although I’m not sure how Father Lantom would make her happy. Wouldn’t he just exorcise her?”

Red wrapped himself irritably all over his boo. Wade was a little bit sorry for having interrupted them. He knew intimately the kind of self-control someone needed to get Red to settle the fuck down during sex.

“Father Lantom doesn’t do exorcisms,” Red grumbled, “He said he doesn’t find them helpful because 99% of the time, the person isn’t actually possessed by anything but their own bad decisions. He’d just talk to her, probably. Was she Catholic?”

There was a thoughtful pause.

“Matty, that was kind of specific; did you ask Father Lantom to exorcise you?” Nelson asked. Red shrugged.

“I mean, only like, two or three times. He made me talk to my social worker.”

Yet another thing to be filed away under ‘Red’s mysterious, awful childhood,’ but it was not important or relevant to pleasing his beautiful, deceased, fucking angry fiancée.

“She wasn’t anything in particular. Pretty sure the important thing is in the effort. So, can I borrow your priest to calm my deceased fiancée?” Red evaluated him, then buried himself mournfully into Nelson’s shoulder. Nelson patted his head.

“Go to church, bud. I promised to visit Bess today anyways. I’ll meet you when you get back.”

Wade made a note to add Nelson to his list of ‘stellar human beings.’ Red sighed and grumbled and grouched and then wandered off to find his shirt.

 

 

Father Lantom was a tall lanky guy who took one look at Wade, and listened for approximately thirty seconds, before redirecting his attention to Red trying to bury himself in his shoulders.

“What have I told you before, Matthew?”

“It’s not for me.”

“We’ve talked about this, son. I won’t lie, I’m a little disappointed.” Red looked devastated. Awww.

“Matt didn’t do anything,” Spidey told the priest. The kid seemed to be excited to be tagging along just for the drama. “Wade’s the one who thinks his house is haunted.”

Father Lantom gave Wade a powerful eyebrow.

“You are Wade?”

“Wilson, yes.”

“And your house is haunted.”

“Potentially haunted, thought it was a rat, no longer think it’s a rat. Whatever it is has been smashing my late fiancee’s glasses, so it’s either her being very unhappy or someone else being hella rude.”

Father Lantom took a steadying breath.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said evenly, “However, there is not much myself or the church can do for you. There are many angry spirits in the world, however I have found that most of these spirits exist only in the minds of those who are enduring great suffering or who wish to see them. Perhaps you might investigate other worldly causes of these occurrences in greater depth before seeking divine intervention.”

That was the nicest way of telling him that he was probably hallucinating and should seek medical advice that Wade had ever experienced. This guy was good. No wonder Red kept him secret.

“Thank you, Father, I will attempt to do that,” he told the priest, “But on the off-chance that that doesn’t work, do you have any recommendations for making her less upset?”

Father Lantom rubbed his cheek while he thought.

“Well, what might you have done to upset her?”

Wade looked at Red. He gave a quizzical expression back. Father Lantom, unfortunately, caught this exchange.

“Matthew,” he said, exasperated.

“I didn’t do anything,” Red answered immediately, like a petulant eight-year-old. It made Spidey giggle.

“We’ve talked about finding yourself in others.”

“Father, I didn’t—it wasn’t a thing. I am not longer finding myself in others.”

“And here I thought—”

“What you are thinking is absolutely true,” Red defended way too quickly, “And I am being very faithful. The most faithful. I promise.”

The priest put a hand on Red’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Don’t promise _me_ , son.”

Okay, this guy was _too_ good. Red looked about 10 seconds away from a breakdown and confessional. If that happened, then he’d be way too guilty to fuck Nelson later and Nelson had done Wade a solid a little bit ago. That was their cue to go.

“I have a list as long as my arm of shit she hated, I’ll just go through all of them until she breaks something else,” Wade told Lantom. He wrapped an arm around Red’s shoulder and waved discreetly at Spidey to head towards the door. “Thanks so much for your help. Red’s really a reformed man. Bye now!”

 

 

He lined up all the glasses and mugs in the house around the edges of the kitchen counter, then sat on the table and started apologizing to Vanessa, or what he hoped was Vanessa, figuring that the display would appeal to her sense of compassion.

He started with apologizing for the whole Red situation, then moved on to apologizing for being a generally shit human being, then individually apologized for all the people he’d flirted and slept with since she died. Then he moved on to apologizing for getting stabbed or shot just a little more than would have made her comfortable on all forty occasions. Then he apologized for being rude to that jackass server that one time, not because he was sorry but because he knew she had a thing about being polite to all wait staff, even the shitty ones. Then he apologized for ignoring Dopinder in all their shenanigans, because Vanessa thought it was unfair to leave excited people out of the excitement. Then he apologized for corrupting and trying to scare Spidey because he knew she would have loved the shit out of the kid. Then he apologized for her feeling sad or lonely wherever she was. He finished by telling her that he loved her and would always love her and would never ask a priest or anyone else to exorcise her from the house so long as she wanted to be there.

Not a single glass so much as rattled.

He personally thought that the space felt lighter, so he bid Ness good night and went to bed.

 

 

He woke up to God raining down terror in his kitchen. He flew out of bed and skidded into the kitchen only to find half of the cups on the counter still standing; their fellows hand fallen, smashed into oblivion on the ground, but only on one side of the kitchen.

He flexed his fingers in rage and decided that no, actually. This was future-Wade’s problem. Present-Wade needed to sleep before he cut a bitch.

 

 

Red poked around his cabinets and stuck his head into all his closets. It was cute that he’d tried to put make-up over the hickey on his neck. Wade would bet good money that Nelson had a much darker matching one with teeth marks around it.

“You don’t have rats,” Red concluded. Small miracles.

“Spiders?” Spidey offered instead.

“Just one,” Red remarked. He closed the cabinet and then wandered into Wade’s room to smell everything in it. Spidey realized after he’d disappeared behind the door that _he_ was the spider in question and gave Wade a bright smile. Despite the fact that he was a little put out from having acquired a million no-kill rat cages for nothing, Wade ruffled his hair and went to lean in the doorway of his room.

Red sneezed.

“Did you get a cat?” he asked.

“No,” Wade said. Matt crawled up on top of his desk and poked around the top of his wardrobe. He sneezed again.

“Dude, you have a cat,” he insisted.

“I do not have a cat,” Wade told him flatly. Red climbed down and then abandoned the room for the living room. Wade turned to follow him irritably. Spidey squirmed between Wade and the doorframe to chase after faster. God, it was like he’d acquired two annoying little brothers overnight. All up in his fucking house. Digging through his fucking shit. Trying to convince him to buy a fucking puppy.

Red sneezed in the living room. Which was weird, Wade hadn’t done anything different with the place since the last time Red had been over and he’d been fine then. He wondered if Nelson had given the guy a cold. Maybe he needed to break out the Clorox wipes as soon as he left.

“Wade, you have kittens!” Spidey’s voice bubbled delightedly.

What.

No _fucking_ way.

“I don’t,” he insisted, hurrying over to where they were crouching.

By the time he got there, Spidey already had his hands full of tiny, heavy headed furballs. There was a big striped cat making weird rumbly meows at his face and the babies in his hands. Red was getting a little watery-eyed and sneezy but was evidently game to pet some of the fluffballs invading Vanessa’s old basket of fleece blankets.

This shit was impossible.

He would have noticed cats. He sure as fuck would have noticed baby cats.

“What the fuck,” he said.

“Don’t talk like that around the babies,” Spidey lectured. Mama cat meowed in agreement.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Wade accused the cat.

“She must have climbed in through your broken window,” Red commented.

“I don’t _have_ a broken window,” Wade told him. Red cocked his head and gave the baby in his hands to mama for safe keeping. She took it and carried it back to the basket to hide it between the blankets. Aha. So that’s how she’d muffled their crying. Crafty bitch. Red grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the kitchen window. He felt along it then shoved the paper towel roll and the soap and the knife block out of the way to reveal a cat-sized hole in the screen.

Wade growled at it. He was going to have to go _back_ to the fucking hardware store and pretend like he’d caught the damn rat to save face with a terrified clerk who he didn’t know from Adam. Then he rounded on the mama cat, who had hopped up onto the counter to watch Wade glare at the hole.

“Do I look like a charity?” he groused. The cat cuddled up to Red and pressed her head into his hand. He sneezed and scared her, but gave her pets anyways, so she warmed right back up to him.

“You have smashed half of everything I own,” Wade accused. “You have evaded my cameras and invaded my room and destroyed my shitty fucking mugs. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Mama purred.

“Okay, good. Acknowledged. You’re evicted.”

“NO!” Spidey called, tears already in his eyes; Spidey had developed a visceral reaction to any mention of eviction over the last year or so. “Wade, they’re babies! If you put them out on the street, some big rat or a dog is gonna eat them and then---and then—”

“He’s not throwing them out on the street,” Red soothed, which was news to Wade because they were most definitely being thrown out on the street.

“Uh-uh,” Wade intervened before he got saddled with six fucking cats for the price of none, “Nope. I do not have a cat. I do not have cats, plural. If they ain’t going outside, they’re going to a shelter.”

“They’ll kill them,” Spidey hiccupped. Mama cat sensed his distress and went to go give him headbutts to keep him steady with her babies.

“I’ll take them,” Red said. Wade nearly snapped his neck in looking at the guy. He was fucking allergic. He couldn’t see the rash growing on his hands or neck, but Wade had been trying to remember where he’d put the Benadryl for the last five minutes.

“No way, pal,” he said. He was pretty sure it was in the yellow first aid kid, which meant it was the bedroom first aid kit. He stalked off to go fetch it before they had to call an ambulance.

“Foggy’ll love them,” he heard Red saying.

“Aren’t you allergic?” Spidey asked.

“Ehn, not so bad. I’ll get used to it. Cats are cleaner than dogs anyways.” This guy was suicidal.

“Red, no. No cats for you. You’re breaking out. Two of these,” he shoved the pills into his hands and forced Red to down them. Red didn’t seem to understand that this meant that he shouldn’t touch the freaking cats anymore however, because he went to go hunker down with Spidey to cuddle them some more, to Mama cat’s delight. She seemed very thankful for the break. One of the kittens Red was holding nuzzled into his neck.

Wade called Nelson to put a fucking stop to this nonsense before it got any worse and ended up with a room full of people admiring the kittens. Nelson fell in love with the kittens like Red but pointed out that they didn’t really have the time to look after them in the current state of things. Wade and May recognized this as his gentle way of separating Red from his allergen. Red didn’t get the hint and said he’d make time. Nelson recalled that Father Lantom had been looking for a church cat because of the mice in the attic and Red and Spidey thought that this was mama cat’s calling.

Father Lantom was invited over to examine the flock for suitability.

 

 

“So, not your fiancée then?” he asked Wade as he tried not to snarl in the presence of a priest.

“Worse,” he groused, “A fur demon with itty-bitty fur demons.”

“Perhaps this is a sign to you to move on,” the father noted. This man was crazy. If nothing else, Wade Wilson could hold a grudge. He'd move on when he was good and dead and by then, he wouldn't have to.

“She’s broken half of my dead fiancee’s shit.”

“Which you so artfully arranged for her to do on the counter. Perhaps if you had not been so quick to assume that it was your fiancée, you would have noticed the intruder in your home.”

He wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t entirely right because Wade _had_ noticed an intruder in his home. He’d just made a few stupid assumptions about the type of intruder. Regardless, Wade now hated him.

“Take the demon,” he said, “There’s only room for one of us in here.”

The father smiled at him.

“You’re not a demon, Wade. Or a devil. I suspect you’re just a bit lonely. You should spend more time with friends.”

Fuck off, old man. You don’t know my life. Unless you’re a mind reader. That would explain a lot.

Wade resolved to keep an eye on the guy, just in case.

The father walked over to see the cat and kittens. He hummed and hawed through Spidey’s introductions, then carefully lifted mama cat to look her in the eyes. She meowed. He set her down and crouched to hold a few of the babies. He took the one from Red first (everyone was trying to protect this man, but as soon as someone took one of the kittens in his hands, he found another to cuddle), and examined each of the five in turn.

“Alright, they’ll do,” he said.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> someone get me a cat, my boo only tells me no with paper thin excuses: 'you're not in the country, boo,' 'you're allergic to everything,' 'i don't like cats.' NONSENSE as if any of that will stop me.


End file.
